1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to searching two or more media sources for media, and more particularly to consolidating the results of the searches of the two more media sources into a single set of search results, grouping, filtering, and sorting the single set of search results, and presenting the grouped and sorted single set search results to a user.
2. Background Art
Searching online for various media such as video, audio, and still images is known. Further, searching for such media on a user's local hard drive is also known. For example, programs such as Microsoft's Media Center®, Google®, Yahoo®, Youtube®, OSX®, iTunes®, Windows®, and TIVO®, all include integrated search mechanisms to locate specific data.
However, each of these programs compartmentalizes the search process to specific kinds of data. For example, iTunes.com® locates all media stored or available within the iTunes® system, which is a small subset of all the video, images, and audio available online. iTunes® also only searches for data stored in its own format, and does not search a users locally or remotely stored available data. Youtube® only searches for videos on Youtube®. Windows® only searches for data on the user's internal and external hard drives. Yahoo® only searches the internet and not the user's hard drive or local media storage devices. Google®, while providing a mechanism to search both the internet and the user's hard drive, cannot search both the internet and the user's hard drive simultaneously and provide a single set of search results. Further, Google only allows searches dedicated to video, audio, or images, and does not provide a mechanism for searching for all media types at the same time.
Thus, there does not exist a system that searches all known media sources, both local and remote, and presents to a user a consolidated list of search results that is grouped according to media content and filtered and sorted according to the user's preferences.